Using its frequency agile radar and infra-red search and track sensor it may not be detected by a less sophisticated opponent, who would then be up against an effectively silent, invisible adversary firing missiles which announce their presence only in the terminal homing phase.

The Active Skyflash seeker is a derivative of the Matra MICA activeradar seeker.

Certainly were the requirement for an active missile to develop, say as the result of regional acquisition of the Fulcrum or Flanker, the AMRAAM and Active Skyflash would have to come under consideration.

Semi-active radarhoming, or SARH, is a common type of missile guidance system, perhaps the most common type for longer range air-to-air and ground-to-air missile systems.

In addition, the resolution of a radar is strongly related to the physical size of the antenna, in the small nose cone of a missile there isn't enough room to provide the sort of accuracy needed for guidance.

Contrast this with beam riding systems, in which the radar is pointed at the target and the missile keeps itself centered in the beam by listening to the signal at the rear of the missile body.

For this purpose, the MRM uses a radarhoming system with a greater detection range and better all-weather properties than the infrared guidance system.

Particularly, in an activeradarhoming system, the transmitter radiating radar waves should be incorporated in a guidance control block.

To overcome this drawback and allow the launching aircraft to retreat after launching the missile, the need for an activeradarhoming system using radar waves transmitted from the missile itself has been recognized and studied by many countries.

The passive radarhoming missiles have the PGP passive radar seeker with a range of 380 to 350 kilometers.

The passive radar seeker for the Kh-31P was designed by NPO Avtomatika and the ARGS-31 activeradar seeker for the Kh-31A by NPO Leninets.

Its ARGS-59 activeradar seeker has a maximum detection range of 25 km against a 5,000 m2 RCS targets and 15 km against a 300 m2 RCS targets.

personal.inet.fi /cool/foxfour/sovmis/sovmis-as.html (3699 words)

Asian Aerospace 2004: Radar plays large role in RSAF buy(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)

The Thales radar is close to being available for deployment, so depending on delivery schedules, Thales could deliver an AESA set on the second batch of aircraft to be delivered under the proposed contract schedule, and then the initial batch could be retrofitted to the AESA configuration.

For its part, Thales officials stress that to step up from the passive to the active model as they propose for the Rafale is much less complicated than what Raytheon proposes for the F-15.

The Singapore competition is really a look into the future in that the AESA radar is now the new cost of admission for a fighter trying to succeed in most export markets.

Because they home on radar energy reflected from their targets, semi-active radarhoming (SARH) missiles like Sparrow or SkyFlash required that their targets should be constantly ‘illuminated’ by the launch aircraft’s continuous wave (or later pulse Doppler) radar.

In an effort to overcome the inherent limitations of semi-active radarhoming missiles, there have been a number of attempts to produce long range missiles which can operate with greater autonomy, and with less support from the launch aircraft.

This meant that the missile used a small on-board radar to home onto the target in the final stages of flight.

This radar can also be linked to the launch vehicles by either a radio data link or a 10m long cable for direct data input to the launcher's systems.

The lower parabolic antenna is the G-band medium altitude target acquisition and early warning radar with a 55-75km range, with the lower feed for medium to high altitude coverage and the upper feed for low altitude coverage.

If the radar vehicle is already active then the time taken for the sequence is reduced to between 15 to 30 seconds.

Two Thales Nederland (formerly Signaal) SPG-503 (STIR 1.8) fire control radars are installed one on the roof of the bridge and one on the raised radar platform immediately forward of the helicopter hangar.

Under the ICE program, the simplified AN/APQ-120 radar of the F-4F was to be replaced with the highly-capable Hughes APG-65 digital multimode radar.

This radar was originally intended for the F/A-18 Hornet, and had Doppler velocity tracking capability for moving target indication.

The AIM-120 relies on semi-active radarhoming for the initial flight to the target, but has autonomous midcourse inertial guidance and a radar transmitter in the nose to provide active terminal radarhoming for the final approach to the target.

The problem with activeradarhoming missiles is that they generally don't work too well close to shore.

Also active homers are limited by small radar sizes and have limited ranges requiring SARH or intertial or midcourse update to get the missile close enough to the target.

An activehoming missile such as Harpoon has a range of around 150 km and would be fired at a point where the radar seeker will switch on and look for targets, the so called 'over the horizon' capability.